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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30023208">toast-the-unknowing tumblr archive</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme'>shinealightonme</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, M/M, Not Fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2019-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:00:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,792</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30023208</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An archived collection of fanfic-adjacent tumblr posts, including ficlets, pseudofic, and codas to published fics.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. LA verse - Ronan's stupid little presents</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Everything herein I originally posted on tumblr in response to an ask. I am cross posting now for the sake of having a safe, archived copy.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written in response to an anon: "I was just rereading <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305087">work a little harder, work another way</a> (&amp; crying about it) and Adam mentions he had to bring all the stupid gifts Ronan gives him in the move. And I imagined them a little older, trying to clean out the house or whatever and they go through the gifts they’ve collected over the years just like reliving memories &amp; being assholes &amp; making each other laugh 💕maybe Adam can't bring himself to get rid of even the most useless junk. just thought i’d share some random fluff ily bye"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Adam does not generally hang onto useless crap, which he likes to point out every time Ronan bestows one of these "gifts" on him. Ronan likes to argue that this means that he has lots of room for shit.</p><p>The gifts mostly end up in a box in the back of their closet, except the cactus (that would have been cruel), and the apron (that actually was useful, and anyway Ronan ends up wearing it more than Adam, so he’s the one who has to bear the indignity of having EAT MY MEAT emblazoned across his chest), and the mug that Adam <em>thought</em> was a plain white coffee mug. He only realized after he’d already taken it into the office that it changed in high temperatures to say HOT STUFF. At that point the damage was already done and he might as well keep it in his office, although he did have to swear Gansey to secrecy so that Ronan would never know that Adam was getting use out of something he’d bought for him.</p><p>Ronan finds the box when they’re getting ready to move into a house, after years in the apartment when they need more space. He’s about to make fun of Adam for having a box of random crap, except then he <em>recognizes</em> the random crap.</p><p>"Fuck," he says, pulling out a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses that have the word HOLLYWOOD across the top of the rims like a hideous and blocky mountain range. "I thought you threw this shit away."</p><p>"What, and let you win?"</p><p>Ronan digs through the box, taking things out at random. Adam runs his fingers over them where Ronan lays them on top of the bed. He snorts when he gets to the card Ronan gave him several Valentine’s ago, which looks like the card a kindergartner would give one of their classmates, because it is; Ronan had thrown the rest of the pack away until he’d found the absolute ugliest cartoon dinosaur. "God, sometimes I can almost forget how tacky you are."</p><p>He’d gotten out of the habit of buying Adam cheap garbage. A little of Adam’s frugality has rubbed off on him, if not for his own sake, then because it took some of the fun out of wasting money, knowing it would make Adam unhappy. But mostly it was just – he has more opportunities these days to give Adam real gifts, the more that he knows what Adam will want, the more he knows that Adam will allow it. He doesn’t need a smokescreen of empty gestures so he can sneak the real support and appreciation in under the radar.</p><p>But, well, there’s still something to be said for cheap garbage. "This was fun. I should do this more."</p><p>"No, you really shouldn’t," but tell that to the banker’s box of crap you’ve lovingly hoarded for several years, Parrish; and when Ronan pulls over at a gas station in Ventura for emergency caffeine and sees a small rack of key chains by the register, shades-wearing suns smiling at him over the word <em>chillax</em>, he grabs one.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/186973106720/i-was-just-rereading-work-a-little-harder-work">Original tumblr link</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. LA Verse - Ronan is a whiny sick boy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for anon: "<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/944106">LA verse</a> headcanons: who is whiniest when they don't feel well?"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Adam is sick he suffers in grim, stoic silence and just waits for it to be over.</p><p>He thought that Ronan was the same way; he’s seen him with headaches, hangovers, sore muscles, one time hobbling around with four stupendously bruised toes where a cow stepped on his foot. While he sometimes lets discomfort put him in a bad mood or kick up his temper, he never really complains, except about the foot,<em> it’s not fucking funny, you asshole, stop laughing.</em></p><p>And then Ronan gets the flu and Adam realizes that he has just never seen Ronan sick before.</p><p>Ronan whines. He complains. He needs fresh air. He needs the window closed because it’s too loud outside. He’s bored. His blanket is too itchy. He’s thirsty. He doesn’t want to drink anything. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to sleep.</p><p>Adam just…goes along with all of this, in a bit of a daze, because to do anything else he would need to really believe that it’s happening, and he can’t, quite. The only real objection he’s able to raise is when Ronan tries to cuddle with him and Adam blurts out but <em>you just threw up, that’s really gross</em>, and then he sulks because Adam called him gross.</p><p>"Hey, does Ronan get sick a lot?" he asks Gansey once he has retreated, a coward, to the office.</p><p>Gansey stops and thinks about it, like it’s not something he’d ever had any cause to consider, because Gansey’s life is so charmed it’s actually magic. "No? Not particularly." And just as Adam is feeling relief Gansey adds, "of course, he gets sick more often when he hasn’t been sleeping well."</p><p>"Oh," says Adam, who has literally never seen Ronan have anything approaching a normal sleeping schedule. "Okay. Great."</p><p>He goes home, because it’s not like he can actually leave his boyfriend just because he could, at any moment, turn into an impossible whiny brat. That’s not a real option. He only thinks about it a little.</p><p>He goes home and finds that Ronan is napping, with Adam’s pillow tucked under his own and, bizarrely, the throw pillows from the living room arrayed around him to make some sort of linen cocoon.</p><p>Ronan is taking care of his health. That’s fantastic. Ronan should sleep more. Ronan should always be asleep.</p><p>He kisses Ronan’s forehead, which would be enough to wake him even if he were sleeping properly and not fitfully.</p><p>Ronan mumbles, "I thought I was gross."</p><p>"I am using all my will power to overcome my revulsion," Adam says, voice soft. "Do you need anything?"</p><p>Ronan makes a pathetic wordless noise.</p><p>"I could make some soup."</p><p>"Soup is for dorks." Ronan thinks for a minute. "I want toast."</p><p>"Okay."</p><p>"And orange juice."</p><p>"Okay."</p><p>"And another pillow."</p><p>"Okay."</p><p>"And I want you to stop laughing at me."</p><p>"Sorry, no can do,” he says, instead of <em>I’m mostly laughing at myself</em>. He runs a hand across Ronan’s forehead, still warm with fever, and Ronan exhales, a fake sigh that has too much real misery in it. Adam kisses the top of his head. "I’ll be right back," and he goes to make toast and figure out where the hell he’s supposed to find another pillow.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/186269114550/la-verse-headcanons-who-is-whiniest-when-they">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. LA verse - picky eaters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/944106">LA verse</a>: I feel like both of them would be weird picky eaters but in completely different ways if that makes sense."</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ronan ping-pongs between “will eat literally anything” and “eats like a toddler,” lots of basic carbs and meats, nothing complicated, vegetables are gross, “did you know they still make chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs?”</p><p>Adam is a picky eater in that there’s a lot of foods he doesn’t like, which are not necessarily predictable or governed by a simple set of rules. But he’s also used to  eating things whether he likes them or not, rather than wasting food, rather than looking unsophisticated. He never makes a big deal out of excluding foods he doesn’t like, just, once he’s got the means, and when he’s in his own home and away from scrutiny, he feeds himself the things he likes. He’s kind of surprised when he realizes Ronan has picked up on all of his stupid likes and dislikes anyway, that Ronan has been avoiding bell peppers and canned tuna and restaurants where they put cilantro on everything, without Adam ever asking him to. He’s touched that Ronan noticed. He’s touched that Ronan never embarrassed him by making him own up to any of it.</p><p>That doesn’t mean he’s going to eat those damn dino-nuggets three nights in a row, he has to draw a line somewhere.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/186359264275/la-verse-i-feel-like-both-of-them-would-be-weird">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. LA verse - quarantine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "how do you think <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/944106">la verse</a> pynch would do in a quarantine situation"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="post-content">
<p></p><div class="replies"><p>Oh, bad.</p><p>Adam’s definitely one of these people who thinks he’s going to come out of quarantine with eight new skills, except he’s ALSO one of these people who lets “working from home” turn into “every hour is a working hour.” So he’s doing as much or more work than ever but he’s also telling himself he has more free time than usual and setting his expectations for his productivity accordingly. It’s not a cute look, especially since Ronan takes quarantine really surprisingly badly.</p><p>Ronan thought he’d handle this great. Fuck, he’s not ALLOWED to go anywhere or talk to anyone? That’s how he wants to live anyway. Except, no, actually, he hates not getting to see Gansey or Blue in person, or just wandering around the Westside when he can’t sit still anymore. Not having shows/restaurants/events that they have to go to means it’s that much harder to tear Adam away from work, and it turns out that actually, Ronan needs to have things to look forward to. When he starts to get really stir crazy, Adam raises the possibility of him going out to stay in Pasadena, where he could at least wander around the ranch and kill time by taking care of the animals, but Ronan absolutely refuses to risk taking the virus out to his mom, even after two weeks with no symptoms.</p><p>So they just ride it out together. It sucks. Ronan gets pissed off at how much Adam is working. Adam gets pissed off at how loud and distracting Ronan is being. They’re both bored and stressed and cooped up. And yet, it’s also wonderful. They’ve never had this much time together. Ronan convinces Adam to sleep in until 9am on work days, or at least, to stay in bed with him until 9am. Adam spends a half-hour one afternoon while Ronan thinks that he’s working turning his office into a little date night getaway (half because Ronan made a joke about Adam not having creative date night ideas and he wants to prove him wrong, and half because, well, he just thinks that Ronan deserves something nice during all of this) and he thinks the end result is pretty underwhelming but Ronan is absolutely swept off his feet. They have some serious conversations that they’ve never really had before about <em>how would we handle an illness, unemployment, a recession</em> that aren’t fun but that leave them both feeling really confident: <em>hey, we’re in a good place. We’re doing good, really good.</em></p><p>Also, any time Ronan gets on Adam’s nerves too much Adam just texts Henry that Ronan is bored and lonely and then Ronan has to spend the next couple hours ignoring all of Henry’s attempts to start a video call with him. Ronan doesn’t even know what the hell half of these apps are. How did they get on his phone. How does he make them go away.</p></div></div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/615346141747380224/how-do-you-think-la-verse-pynch-would-do-in-a">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. actor AU - Ronan & Adam's second marriage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "Been thinking about “<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/15947099">there’s talk going ‘round this town</a>” a lot and wondering what Adam and Ronan are up to in their 2nd marriage, hbu?"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Haven’t checked in with them in a long time, let’s see what’s up:</p>
<ul>
<li>They went looking for a third dog and they couldn’t pick between two different rescues so they adopted both of them. They both blame each other for the fact that they now have a ridiculous amount of dogs.</li>
<li>Ronan has become very popular counselor with the CITs at Adam’s foster camp; less so with the younger children, who don’t know who he is and are less than impressed with his arts and crafts abilities.</li>
<li>They’re wading through the bureaucracy of adopting – getting divorced and remarried kind of put that plan on hold, go figure – but the extra time is a bit of a relief because they have to find somewhere else to live, <em>we don’t have enough room for all these dogs, let alone children – yeah but kids love dogs, what’s the problem?</em>
</li>
<li>People keep asking them if they’re going to do another movie together. They usually say something about keeping their work and life separate. The truth is that Adam has a hard time stay in character around Ronan, and if he doesn’t break on his own Ronan usually starts screwing around trying to make him break.</li>
<li>Now that Adam has his Oscar Ronan has convinced him to take roles just because they look fun. This leads to Adam being in a huge fucking mess of a movie that becomes a bit of a cult classic. Ronan finds this hilarious. He makes Opal retweet every dumb meme and gif set from it on his official Twitter feed.</li>
<li>Henry is determined to make another movie with Ronan someday. He is undeterred by the fact that Ronan utterly refuses to work with him, and that his favorite assistant director Blue utterly refuses to work with Ronan. He single-handedly crafted the greatest marriage in modern Hollywood, what <em>can’t</em> he do?</li>
<li>Ronan leases the snake house to Opal for a hundred bucks a month. She’s converted most of it into an art gallery; the building isn’t zoned for that, but then, it barely counts as an art gallery. Hours of operation are sporadic, lights are dim if they’re on at all, and the entrance fee is whatever she feels like charging on a given day. It would have gone out of business ages ago, but she has no overhead costs, and it keeps ending on hipster lists for underground things to see in LA.</li>
</ul>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/188500421610/been-thinking-about-theres-talk-going-round">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. childhood friends AU - teenage years</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "do u have some random headcanons for your <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22515760">foster care adam verse/childhood friends verse</a>, that you'll like to share with us? if you want to of course, i just think that's your most potentially teen drama fic you have ever written, and i say that not in a bad way, i just think it's such a fun and comforting au :')"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In sixth grade, they start middle school, and Adam gets bumped up a grade in math. He ends up in the same class as Declan and develops one of those awkward kid crushes you only realize is a crush years later. Ronan bugs Adam to finally get Debbie and Bill’s permission to have Blue sleepover, so they all end up hanging out at his house more and at the Lynch house less. It does not occur to Adam that these two facts might be related.</p><p>In seventh grade Adam’s adoption goes through. Adam continues to call Debbie and Bill by their first names; he thinks that they’d like it if he called them mom and dad, but they never actually say anything about it. It just feels too much like lying, to Adam, like pretending that nothing his parents did to him ever happened, and anyway, those aren’t good words to him.</p><p>In eighth grade, Blue and Ronan’s running competition for who will get the bigger role in the school play backfires when they are cast as the two romantic leads of the spring show. Adam laughs at them a whole lot to distract himself from the weird emotions that he gets watching them hold hands and pretend to be in love. They stop acting after that show and go into the tech crew instead, which both Ronan and Blue claim was THEIR idea.</p><p>Freshman year, someone makes a joke about Blue having two boyfriends. She’s not really surprised – the jokes aren’t new, although they’re getting grosser and more uncomfortable as she gets older – but she’s kind of surprised about how pissed off Ronan gets. It’s late enough at night that Adam (who has the earliest curfew) is already home and isn’t around to be the voice of reason. They commit some light vandalism in revenge and then go grab ice cream to celebrate. Blue asks Ronan why it bugs him when people insult her. The answer is at least half that she’s his <em>friend</em> okay, Jesus, what is he supposed to do, just let people talk about her like that; but instead of saying that what Ronan actually does is blurt out all of his feelings about Adam in the middle of a Dairy Queen at eleven o'clock at night. Blue’s verdict: they are definitely going to need more blizzards to deal with this.</p><p>Sophomore year, Ronan’s dad dies. Ronan doesn’t handle it well. Adam gets worried about him one night when Ronan stops responding to his texts, and he sneaks out to find him and make sure he’s okay. The next morning Adam isn’t at school. Ronan feels like shit on top of everything else for getting Adam into trouble, until Adam shows up after lunch; Debbie and Bill let him sleep in since he was out so late, and then they wanted to make an appointment for him with his social worker, in case he needed to talk to someone about what he’s going through. He is super grounded, though. Blue takes over “make sure Ronan doesn’t do anything stupid” duty. She doesn’t to let him get away with <em>anything</em>.</p><p>Junior year, Adam and Ronan start dating. The getting together part is easier than Ronan had ever expected, and the dating part is everything he ever wanted; the hard part, the part that he hadn’t really thought about, is keeping it secret. He wants to tell <em>everyone</em>: classmates, teachers, random people walking down the street, and yeah, his mom, why wouldn’t he want her to know something so important about his life? But Adam isn’t ready to; the first time they really talk about it he tells Ronan <em>if your mom freaks out about it she can’t send you back</em>, which doesn’t even make sense – Bill and Debbie are super chill, for old people, plus they’re those parents that volunteer for every field trip and shit, plus Adam is adopted so where the hell would they even send him to – but Ronan doesn’t have to get it to get that it’s what Adam needs. So he keeps it a secret. Even though it’s so fucking hard. The only person he gets to talk to about Adam is Blue, who is sick. to. death. of hearing him, quote, “writing the sappiest romance novel of all time, seriously, I’m gonna hurl,” close quote.</p><p>(Adam’s eventual coming out to Bill and Debbie goes just fine; they’re kind of awkward but very supportive for him and they tell him that they love him and that “we always thought Ronan was a nice young man.” There’s at least one (1) Pride parade where they are very earnest and very embarrassing and Blue has zero sympathy for that, either, because seriously Adam you went to Pride with your parents, what did you think would happen?)</p><p>Senior year is weird, for Blue. She’s happy for Adam and Ronan, obviously she’s happy, that’s what you are when your two best friends are happy, is happy. It’s just that the three of them were always the three of them, and now a lot of the time Adam and Ronan hang out just the two of them and Blue’s just…Blue. There’s nothing to do about it, though, no <em>one</em> thing, so she does a little bit of a lot of things to see what helps. Dating doesn’t – Adam and Ronan have found the only two decent teenage boys in town, each other, and after a few attempts she gives up in disgust. She goes to a lot of parties for a while and turns out to have a terrifying aptitude for flip cup, but that’s just all the same people she doesn’t want to date and doesn’t want to hang out with at school, and being around more people doesn’t actually make her feel less alone. She tries some new clubs and new electives, likes shop a lot more than she expected, likes art a lot <em>less</em> than she expected, although some of the art kids aren’t so bad. She sinks a lot of time into her college applications, all the same state schools that Adam’s applying to, a bunch of West Coast schools that he isn’t. She doesn’t say anything about it to him; she’s probably not going to get in and she can’t afford it without a bunch of scholarships anyway, so there’s no real point in hurting anyone’s feelings. Just, if she’s on her own, she wants to have things that are <em>her own</em>. She can have that <em>and</em> have Adam, who still lends her all his favorite books so they can talk about them, and gets a job at the same restaurant she does when she complains about how boring her shifts are, and comes over to watch readings and seances at her house, half-skeptical and half-enthralled. She can have that <em>and </em>have Ronan, who still gives her rides to absolutely anywhere she needs to go no matter how far it is, and goes thrift store diving with her for things that might make good costumes for the theater department even though every single opinion he has about clothes is WRONG, and texts her to tell her every time he goes to the bathroom, like that’s something anyone wants to know. They’re still the three of them, even if they have to rearrange things a little bit, and Ronan and Adam are still the people she shares everything with. When she gets pissed off her first day of classes in Berkeley, they’re the first people she texts, <em>you will not BELIEVE this jerk in my history discussion, he tried to pay me to be in his study group</em> and they immediately support her – or, Adam does; Ronan texts <em>how much?</em> but that’s what support looks like, from Ronan. That’s what she wants, for all of them, and she’s happy, she’s really, really happy.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/614336755346407424/do-u-have-some-random-headcanons-for-your-foster">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. superhero AU - where are they now</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "I absolutely adore your fic “<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669841">word on the street</a>”. It was the first fic that I read by you and I go back to reread it every so often. I was wondering if you had any headcanons about pynch’s domestic life after that fic?"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Word on the Street is an interesting one because I can’t decide whether the headcanons should embrace superhero tropes, or if they should invert/refute superhero tropes, or if they should just ignore them entirely, since Adam’s attitude is ultimately “I’m dating Ronan, not Greywaren.” But in any case:</p>
<ul>
<li>Adam keeps ending up in weird/dangerous situations and keeps picking up new skills that could be useful to get out of or survive said situations</li>
<li>He definitely rescues Ronan at least once using said skills</li>
<li>The Gazette gets just enough facts/photo coverage of that happening that they run a story about Adam being Greywaren’s sidekick
<ul>
<li>Adam is pissed</li>
<li>Ronan thinks it’s hilarious</li>
<li>Blue thinks it’s hilarious</li>
<li>Blue is also just really glad because people used to say Mirror was Greywaren’s sidekick and wtf, she’s been doing this superhero thing LONGER than Ronan and BETTER than Ronan, SHE took HIM under HER wing, if anyone is the sidekick it’s GREYWAREN</li>
<li>Gansey is just kind of glad that the “Adam isn’t Greywaren’s sidekick” sniping has eclipsed the “Mirror isn’t Greywaren’s sidekick” sniping, because he’s still trying to lay some groundwork for asking Mirror out and that argument is a total and complete mood killer anytime it comes up</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Adam gives Ronan a lot of shit about his “secret lair” just being his crappy apartment. Ronan points out that it would be wasteful to rent a whole second location for his alter ego. Adam counters that the apartment could at least be less crappy, “what if the Justice League has to stop by?” “Eh those guys are all jerks.”
<ul>
<li>Adam concedes, fine, but he’s at least going to fix up the cupboards, and also if Batman ever stops by he’s going to leave Ronan for him</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Ronan has a long-running “joke” that Declan is going to turn into a supervillain someday. Adam points out that for all they know Declan could already be a supervillain. Ronan laughs at the time and then can’t sleep that night.</li>
<li>There is at LEAST one occasion where Henry Cheng sends Ronan out on a job demanding he return with photos of Greywaren
<ul>
<li>I love Henry and he is canonically a very smart and observant person but I have decided that he is never allowed to notice all of the weirdness going on under his nose just because I love that J. Jonah Jameson “guy who’s not in on the secret” thing</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Opal is definitely a superpowered child criminal that runs around town stealing and/or breaking stuff, and ruins a bunch of Greywaren’s operations for like, six months before he finally catches up with her
<ul>
<li>actually he doesn’t catch up with her at all</li>
<li>it is definitely Adam who pulls that off</li>
<li>Adam gives her the key to Ronan’s “secret lair” aka the apartment with the loud pipes and complete lack of insulation</li>
<li>“What if she wrecks my place?” “She can’t wreck it worse than you have”</li>
<li>Opal proceeds to come and go to the apartment as she pleases</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Heroes and morally gray/chaotic neutral types start coming to Adam for advice on their plans, possibly because of his by now well-documented expertise at surviving bad situations, possibly because Opal is acting as a bizarre tiny little hypewoman for him
<ul>
<li>Meanwhile more and more people in that community are discovering just how different Ronan!Greywaren is from Niall!Greywaren and a bunch of them don’t want to associate with him anymore</li>
<li>Adam is a better superhero than Ronan</li>
<li>“Whatever, like I care, I’m not going to be jealous of my own sidekick”</li>
<li>Ronan is absolutely jealous and that sidekick comment means he spends the night in his apartment instead of at Adam’s</li>
<li>That is a night that Opal is hanging around</li>
<li>The next morning a dangerous fugitive is delivered to the police in handcuffs and Ronan shows up at work with a friendship bracelet and some weird bruises that he shrugs off as being from “paintball”</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>“Just so we’re clear,” Opal says, “<em>you’re </em>the sidekick”</li>
</ul>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/615979818657447936/p-i-absolutely-adore-your-fic-ldquoword-on-the">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. bartender/artist AU - Ronan's aggressive wingmanning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon who requested <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14144754">darling, don't make such a drama</a> for a meme about missing/deleted scenes; this wasn't a deleted scene per se, because there was never a chance it was going to be in the original fic, but it existed very clearly in my mind as something that absolutely happens in this verse.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gansey, minding his own business one day, studying at his favorite bar, and the bartender just drops into the booth opposite and asks him without any preamble “are you straight?”</p><p>“No?” he says, caught off-guard. The bartender doesn’t react, like he’s waiting for something else, so he adds “I’m bi?”</p><p>“Good. A bunch of us are going to a gay bar after close for Cheng’s birthday. You’re coming too.”</p><p>“I am?” but the bartender just walks off. “Who’s Cheng?”</p><p>He does go with them, because at the end of the night his favorite waitress, Blue, says “you’re coming with us?” and Henry, the host who always has time to chat with him when he arrives at the bar, lights up. And it’s not like he ever meets anyone outside of academia. This could be good for him.</p><p>He assumes that the bartender was hitting on him, in a slightly terrifying way, so he just gets more confused than he already was (not an inconsiderable amount of confusion) when the bartender’s boyfriend joins them and the bartender immediately stops paying any attention to anyone else. It takes him weeks to figure out that it’s Henry and Blue, not Ronan, who are interested in him. He never does figure out that Ronan was attempting to wingman for them, because <em>why would anyone who isn’t Ronan think that counts as being a wingman</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/187770822785/hmm-either-the-witchadam-story-or-the">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. soulmate AU - various</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written in response to a few different anons regarding <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25059034">if love is just a game (then how come it's no fun)</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>re: if love is just a game: food as a love language</p>
</blockquote><p>Gansey and Blue love: letting them order what they wanna order even if it’s ridiculous</p><p>Adam and Ronan love: making a casual gesture that gets obsessed over for the rest of the night</p><p>Adam and Blue love: having whole rituals and routines that don’t need to be discussed because they’re so ingrained</p><p>Gansey and Ronan love: getting coffee together even when the coffee is bad because they want an excuse to spend time together</p><p>Adam and Gansey love: awkwardly investing a lot of time and effort into reaching out in a way that doesn’t look like it took that much time or effort</p><p>Blue and Ronan love: TAKE THIS AND CHOKE ON IT</p><hr/><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>in if love is just a game universe, how do you think the convo of adam deciding to move back in with ronan goes? how long does it take?</p>
</blockquote><p>I think that Gansey coming home from an excavation and Adam suddenly having much less space to himself than he’d gotten used to could be a good catalyst for starting that conversation. I think it’s probably <em>not</em> the excavation that we see Gansey go off on at the end of the fic; at that point Adam and Ronan would’ve been together for less than a year, Ronan’s probably still adjusting to having PEOPLE in his HOUSE, and if Adam hadn’t been living with Gansey that long then he might just be excited to have him back as a roommate. I’d say they maybe go through a few homecomings before Adam hits that point of being more put out than happy about it; probably the difference between that time and the previous times makes it more obvious to Adam that he’s maybe outgrown this living situation. So, it’s maybe a couple years after moving out before he moves back in?</p><p>I think the entirety of the conversation is Adam saying “I’ve been thinking of moving in with you” and Ronan, trying to play it cool, is like “okay. You need help packing or what?”</p><p>I think there is also a more earnest and open conversation <em>after</em> the fact, but that’s definitely how it starts.</p><hr/><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>another if love is just a game question: when is the first time ronan thinks about wanting to marry adam and when do you think they'd actually get married?</p>
</blockquote><p>The first time Ronan thinks about marrying Adam is the first time that Adam falls asleep on him in front of other people.</p><p>I’m not sure when they get married. Ronan angsts for a long time about how to ask. At some point in between “decided to propose” and “actually proposing” they go visit Blue’s family and the psychics almost give the game away about a thousand times because they keep <em>mentioning</em> it or <em>asking Ronan questions </em>or just generally <em>bemoaning the fact that Ronan is going to sort-of become part of the kind-of family</em> and Ronan has to panic and check that Adam wasn’t around to hear it. It’s a nerve-wracking visit and Ronan is still on edge when they get home so when Adam hesitantly mentions <em>should we talk about getting married </em>Ronan’s first response is <em>who fucking ratted me out. </em>(It was none of them. Adam does not need a psychic to read his fortune to tell that Ronan wants to marry him.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/624190894642446336/re-if-love-is-just-a-game-food-as-a-love">original</a> <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/631082135461232640/in-if-love-is-just-a-game-universe-how-do-you">tumblr</a> <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/631286473130475520/another-if-love-is-just-a-game-question-when-is">posts</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. wedding fic - missing scene</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Posted in response to a missing/deleted scene meme, for <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/11650389">faith, hope, all that bullshit</a>.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It reminds him of a weekend at Blue’s last year when she’d been sick as a dog. Gansey had been out of the country and called, frantic in a choppy Skype call, to plead with Adam to go check on her; Adam was packing before Gansey had finished asking. He’d spent a long and surreal three days making Blue soup that she wouldn’t eat and tea that she hated while she napped with eleven blankets and the heater on.</p><p>Adam has no idea how much she remembers about that weekend, so he’s never brought up the fact that she scribbled out an annotated list of Declan’s most glaring character flaws, or that she had done a Calla impression so pitch-perfect it nearly gave Adam a heart attack, or that she had described her first time with Gansey in <em>excruciating detail</em>, even though Adam kept getting up and leaving the room. If she doesn’t remember, he doesn’t want to embarrass her or, God forbid, invite a repeat performance.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/187768665050/ahhh-definitely-the-one-that-always-comes-to-my">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. accidental Declan/Adam sexting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>An anon once sent me an ask about Adam accidentally texting Declan when he meant to text Ronan, which of course made me think what happens if it's a sext, but I refrained from asking. Three different individuals immediately responded that they wanted to ask about the sexts, so, here. Accidental sexts.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s some variables in the premise, so if we’re ~*~asking questions~*~ these are the ones I’m starting with:</p>
<ul>
<li>does Declan know Adam and Ronan are dating</li>
<li>does Declan know it’s from Adam</li>
<li>does Declan know it’s a sext</li>
</ul><p>In all of these scenarios, btw, I am picturing Declan, after the confusion is cleared up, demanding to know how Adam could <em>not tell</em> which brother he was talking to from seeing the preceding texts in the thread, and then Adam has to admit that Ronan hates texting so much that Adam has actually texted with him <em>less</em> than he has texted with Declan. “Both of my Lynch threads with are just about needing a ride somewhere.” “If you needing a ride so often means that I have to read about my brother’s sex life, I will <em>buy you a car myself</em>.” He’s joking, obviously, but if he wasn’t Adam thinks he would actually take the car. He’s earned it.</p><p>If yes to all three questions, I think Declan deletes the first message and tries to ignore it (he is good at keeping secrets but bad at making peace with them). If there is more than one, then he sends a terse <em>This is Declan. Change your contact names</em>. They never speak of it to each other or to Ronan. Actually they don’t speak to each other about <em>anything</em> for like half a year, Adam is too mortified. Anytime they end up in a room together it’s just silence and averted eyes. Parrish ought to be better at subtlety than that; he would’ve given it away ages ago if this was anyone else they were dealing with, but Ronan has very large blind spots, especially where his family is concerned. He tends to miss things that don’t fit with what he’s already convinced himself is the truth. For once Declan is grateful.</p><p>If Declan doesn’t know Adam and Ronan are dating then I think yeah, he rolls with it: <em>huh, I wouldn’t have considered Parrish, but if he’s putting himself out there, sure, I’ll bite</em>. Under those conditions he isn’t going to notice anything’s wrong, especially if Adam calls him “Lynch” at some point. So it’s entirely up to Adam in this scenario to realize his mistake, and that means the reaction is entirely up to Adam, at least to start. Would he end things with an abrupt “I take it back, let’s not do this anymore” and not tell Declan he was a misdial? That preserves the secrecy, if that’s a priority for either him or Ronan or both, and it’s less embarrassing in the immediate moment. But it does leave him worrying, <em>crap, Declan thinks I’m into him, what if he says something, what if he does something, what is he going to think when he finds out about us and realizes I was sexting someone else while I was dating his brother</em>. So I think he would bite the bullet and admit to Declan that he’d made a mistake; maybe he wouldn’t specify who it WAS meant for, although I think Declan would put it together pretty easily (especially if Adam did call him Lynch), so that would not last very long. In this situation I think that they <em>do</em> tell Ronan (specifically, Adam tells Ronan), because Adam feels like Ronan deserves to know that Declan knows they’re together. He does debate for a bit on whether to tell Ronan the <em>full</em> story, would it really be <em>thaaaat bad</em> to just let Ronan think that Adam outted him for no reason, but he knows he has to tell him the whole truth. Ronan for sure has some initial blow up at Declan, but I’m torn on how he handles it in the long run. “Wants to just pretend it never happened” is good, but “frequently brings it up to shame Declan and uses the fact that Declan 1. <em>sexts</em> and 2. <em>finds Adam attractive</em> as proof of some moral failing on Declan’s part, while never acknowledges the hypocrisy that he himself does both of these things” is also very good.</p><p>If Declan doesn’t know it’s Adam – let’s say he has a new phone and lost his contacts. One day some number he doesn’t know just sends him a flirty message out of the blue. He assumes it’s someone he hooked up with in the past, because who else would it be? He plays along, because why not have a little more fun with someone he must have liked fine before, and also why admit <em>hey I don’t know who this is</em> when he can probably figure it out eventually. (Yes I do realize I have written the non-sexual version of this scenario before, “Declan refusing to admit he doesn’t know what’s happening so he just goes along with it so he can figure it out along the way without exposing any weakness” is a good scenario.) The problem with this one is that I cannot decide when &amp; how the mix up is discovered. I kinda want it to be <em>never</em>; that doesn’t feel terribly plausible (either of them could see the messages in the thread the next time they intentionally text each other), but I am cracking up at the idea that Adam thinks it was Ronan and Declan thinks it was a last flirtation with some old flame. It never happens again, they both just have these different memories of the same event for the rest of their lives.</p><p>If Declan doesn’t (at first) know its a sext – this one depends on the “what kind of sexter is Adam,” question. I think he’d probably start off playful and flirty instead of just opening with <em>I wanna X your Y. </em>(I definitely think that Adam doesn’t send dirty pictures over text message – too cautious for that – and I don’t see the two of them being friends on Snapchat/whatever the kids are using for nudes these days.) Without the right context, and without visual cues or tone of voice to go off of, it’s more likely that Declan would misinterpret it than that he would immediately assume it was a prelude to something dirty. To go with a PAINFULLY cliche example, if Adam texts him “what are you wearing,” Declan is probably going to wonder <em>why does Parrish need to know that, is he trying to find me in a crowd</em>, so then his response is going to just be like “why, are you coming to visit” but Adam ALSO does not have the right context or visual cues or tone of voice, so HE’S going to misinterpret that as engagement with the whole sexting premise. So now he messages back, <em>you tell me, are you lonely</em> and Declan has a fucking existential crisis, because yes he always at all times in all places is lonely but why is Parrish just dropping that question on him, how did he notice, why is he challenging him about it. He realizes what’s happening when the flirting/sexting becomes overt, and as awkward and embarrassing as that is it’s also kind of a relief, <em>oh okay Parrish is not staring past my armor and into my soul, he’s just careless and horny</em>, except it’s also not a relief because for a second he felt slightly less alone and now the second is over</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/623025205170913280/my-little-freaking-degenerates-i-love-you">original tumblr post</a>, and <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/622954944060850176/thinking-about-a-world-in-which-adam-puts-ronan">the post</a> it was in response to</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Ronan speed dating</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "How do you think a Pynch speed date would go?"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <ul>
<li>Ronan was coerced into going by [insert your choice of character here]</li>
<li>He has to <em>go</em>, okay, he doesn’t have to <em>play along</em>
</li>
<li>He starts every date with a complete conversation killer</li>
<li>Just to keep things interesting, he uses a new one every time. Fortunately he has a lot of them
<ul>
<li>I’m a high school drop out</li>
<li>My father was murdered when I was fifteen</li>
<li>I keep my fridge in the bathroom</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>He pulls this shit on Adam (“I stole my best friend’s car and immediately crashed it”) and Adam doesn’t even bat an eye
<ul>
<li>“What kind of car?”</li>
<li>huh</li>
<li>“What kind of car?”</li>
<li>1973 Camaro</li>
<li>“Oh, so he deserved it.”</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Ronan is intrigued and keeps trying to find something that will catch Adam off guard
<ul>
<li>I don’t believe in cell phones</li>
<li>“You don’t believe they exist, even though yours is sitting on the table right in front of you, or you feel morally superior to other people because you’re bad at using them?”</li>
<li>…I don’t feel morally superior</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>At the end of their five minutes Ronan panics because he realizes that this is the first person he’s been interested in in a long time and he spent their entire time together <em>trying to scare him away</em>
</li>
<li>He tries to find some way to extend the conversation, to level the playing field a bit, to express an interest since he didn’t actually <em>ask Adam a question</em> the entire time, and ends up blurts out “what’s something you’re bad at”</li>
<li>Adam is already walking away from the table but he thinks about it for a second and says “giving up”
<ul>
<li>what the fuck does that mean</li>
<li>how can you be bad at giving up</li>
<li>does that mean you give up too soon or not soon enough</li>
<li>or that you keep going back after you gave up</li>
<li>who poses a fucking riddle at a speed dating event</li>
<li>what if that wasn’t even an answer to the question what if he was just saying he was giving up on the conversation</li>
<li>fuck</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Ronan spends the entire next “date” dwelling on this</li>
<li>He forgets to even scare that guy off, ugh, why did he let [your fave character] talk him into this</li>
<li>He should just leave before they give people their matches
<ul>
<li>he doesn’t leave</li>
<li>apparently several people indicated they’d go on another date with him, which, what the fuck is wrong with these dudes</li>
<li>the event organizers are kind of disappointed in him that he only gave one name he’d want to see again</li>
<li>who the fuck cares though because it’s a match</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/617774396750413824/how-do-you-think-a-pynch-speed-date-would-go">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Adam's phone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "If Adam had had a cell phone in high school, do you think Ronan would’ve picked up for him"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Gansey: </b>Parrish, we think that Lynch has a crush on you.</p><p><b>Adam:</b> He doesn’t.</p><p><b>Henry: </b>Would you care to place money on that?</p><p><b>Adam: </b>No. I’m still right. He can’t have a crush on me, he never even picks up the phone when I call him.</p><p><b>Gansey:</b> True, but that can be misleading, if you consider –</p><p><b>Blue:</b> What Gansey’s trying to say is that we overheard Ronan when you called him yesterday. He spent so long practicing how to say “hey, Parrish” that the phone stopped ringing before he could pick it up.</p><p><b>Adam:</b> What.</p><p><b>Henry: </b>And then he threw it out the window and yelled “how do people answer the phone?”</p><p><b>Adam: </b><em>What</em>.</p><p><b>Henry:</b> He was on the second floor. It was very amusing.</p><p><b>Gansey:</b> So, yes, just…please be careful with him. Don’t break his heart.</p><p><b>Blue: </b>You already broke his phone.</p><p><b>Adam:</b> Is that why he didn’t text me back when I needed a ride this morning?</p><p><b>Henry:</b> THAT’S YOUR BIG TAKE AWAY?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/634471164599844864/if-adam-had-had-a-cell-phone-in-high-school-do">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Ronan's self-care routine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "Ronan’s “I don’t hate myself” vs Adams “I am such a damaged thing”, Whatever Ronan’s self care routine is, he should share it with his man"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Ronan:</b> so picture there’s a monster inside of you</p><p><b>Adam:</b> way ahead of you</p><p><b>Ronan:</b> now you bring the monster outside to the world</p><p><b>Adam:</b> I don’t follow</p><p><b>Ronan:</b> okay sure the first six times you try it’ll try to kill you, but after THAT –</p><p><b>Adam:</b> no, I don’t get why I’d want the monster to get outside</p><p><b>Ronan:</b> because then it’s not inside of you anymore?</p><p><b>Adam:</b> but if it’s only inside of me I can hide it</p><p><b>Adam: </b>and no one else has to know it’s there</p><p><b>Ronan: </b>…</p><p><b>Adam:</b> maybe I just need a real therapist</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/617143405312655360/ronans-i-dont-hate-myself-vs-adams-i-am-such">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Gangsey AUs (daemons, Leverage, Disney)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for various anons</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Trc daemon AU! who has what kind of daemon and why? personally i'd give ronan a wolf bc wolfs are group(family)oriented and work together with ravens. Gansey a lion bc he passes as functioning uptownboy and independently goes spelunking since early puberty. also bc the name richard has lion-association. what's your take on it??</p>
</blockquote><p>Adam’s daemon is a coyote. It is a creature that is associate with SURVIVAL above all other things – coyote are incredibly good at adapting to human developments. I got really interested in the existence of coywolves for a while, as an example of this adaptability, and I almost went with a coywolf for Adam’s daemon, but coywolves don’t have the same name recognition or provoke the same instinctive emotional reaction that coyotes do, which is important to me because: I want Adam’s daemon to be something that he is <em>deeply ashamed of. </em>He does not want people to look at this visible incarnation of his soul and associate it with the thing that eats their pet cats and hides out in canyons and lives in garbage. He thinks people look at him and see <em>him </em>like that, as this garbage pet-eating creature that they’d really like to exterminate. And he has to learn to understand what the coyote says about him, that he is a survivor, that he is going to come out on top, and to love that strength in himself.</p><p>I really really really want Blue’s daemon to be a giant fucking brown bear. I wish I could have a lot of deep thoughts about this. But if I’m honest, about 90% of this pick is just that I think it would be funny if Blue’s daemon was huge. There’s a lot to be said about bears in particular, as omnivores, as being creatures who will mind their own business until you FUCK with them and then they will DESTROY you, that relates to Blue, but I would be lying if I said that my primary motivation for this was anything other than the size difference – for the sake of humor, but also because Blue is SO BIG in spirit. There’s a reason I made her a Machamp &amp; Onix trainer in my Pokemon AU. Things that represent her heart and soul should be ENORMOUS and TOUGH and more than a little terrifying.</p><p>At some point I locked into the idea of Gansey’s daemon being a stag, and I have never really been able to look at any other animal without going “yeah, but stags though.” There’s the stags in BLLB, of course, but I don’t actually want to tie myself into something in an AU just because it appears in canon. But there’s a very traditional connection between stags and royalty (I always think of the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), and they have a certain balance between elegance and power that intrigues me – you don’t really think of a stag as an animal that could fuck you up, but oh, it could, but it <em>looks </em>like it’s just there to look majestic.</p>
<ul>
<li>I feel like Harry Potter kind of ruined anyone else getting to use stags as their daemons/Patronuses/heartsong animals, but – if it’s stupid to do something just because someone else did it, I think it’s gotta also be stupid to NOT do something you want just because someone ELSE ALSO did it.</li>
</ul><p>The lazy daemon for Ronan is a raven, or a snake. These are fine! Kind of a gimme, but hey, who doesn’t like being given things? Personally, I am willing to entertain a wide variety of possible Ronan daemons, as long as two things are true:</p>
<ul>
<li>they are fucking adorable</li>
<li>they will absolutely run full tilt at your ankle in an inherently fruitless attempt to murder you.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://rraaaarrl.tumblr.com/post/42108265579/happy-dance-x">Exhibit A</a></li>
<li><a href="http://hitmewithcute.tumblr.com/post/171038366622/a-miniature-cow">Exhibit B</a></li>
<li><a href="http://sdzoo.tumblr.com/post/182949707276/i-have-a-fever-and-the-only-cure-is-more-tiny">Exhibit C</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Do I expect this choice to be a popular opinion?</li>
<li>No</li>
<li>Am I going to change it?</li>
<li>Also no</li>
</ul><p>I know at some point I formulated opinions about Henry’s daemon but I can’t remember them and in the moment the thing that comes to mind is a peacock. I feel like that might be kind of reductive of his character, but that’s what I’ve got.</p>
<hr/><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Thoughts on a leverage trc au?</p>
</blockquote><p>I know I’ve read a Leverage TRC au post somewhere before but I can’t find it now, so apologies if I end up borrowing from that, it’s not my intention to steal and not give credit.</p><p>Gansey as the mastermind feels like a gimme, to the point where I almost don’t want to make him the mastermind, but that’s silly so I’m going to resist the urge. I think for him to really work as a Robin Hood type figure he needs to not be, you know, super rich and the son of a Congresswoman, so maybe the set up is that something happens to ruin the Gansey family fortunes – either because they were victims, or because his parents were into some shady shit and it got exposed. Actually I kind of like that second one a lot, and I think that it would make a lot of sense why Gansey would then 1. want to go on this crusade, to make up for the wrong that his family has done, and 2. need to do so through extralegal means, because his resources are gone and his name is mud.</p><p>You know that moment in The Raven Boys where Blue thinks that she would make an awesome fake psychic? Yeah. Grifter Blue. She’d already established a livelihood of ripping off rich douchey white guys, so teaming up with Gansey really just lets her follow her passion on a bigger scale; now she topples companies that commit the worst crimes against the environment. She takes a sabbatical and the team recruits Henry as a replacement grifter (he’s less himself out loud, so why not be someone else? why not be everyone else?). Henry flirts with absolutely everyone and then swans off to be fabulous somewhere else when Blue returns, although he makes her tell him all the best stories about the team.</p><p>Ronan is the hacker. No, obviously, he’s the hitter, but <em>Jesus</em> can you imagine hacker!Ronan. Sometimes he’s just there to be intimidating, and he sure is good at looking tough and scary, but the second anything goes wrong and there’s danger he’s the first one in and the last one out. He’s mostly convinced that all he’s good for is hitting people, but he is good at it, and it lets him protect his team. He insists that he’s not an ideas guy and it’s up to everyone else to plan things, but then sometimes he just offhandedly comes up with a piece of knowledge or a suggestion that’s super helpful. It used to catch the team off guard but now they’re used to the fact that he has hidden depths. Well, except about anything related to technology. He’s absolutely hopeless with it and he spends a lot of time complaining and arguing with…</p><p>Adam, the hacker. I’m picturing that he got into computers with every intention of having a legitimate career, but that got derailed somehow, possibly through a financial disaster, possibly through some kind of unfairness. Maybe he was paying his way through college by writing papers for his richer classmates but he got caught and expelled. So now he’s bitter and unemployable and <em>fuck it, </em>the system was never going to allow him to move up so why should he have to follow it? Getting recruited onto the team ends up being a really good thing for him, because it channels that anger into something positive and he actually has a purpose now, but at the time it took a lot of convincing for him to want to work with Gansey, let alone trust him.</p><p>And Noah as the thief! (Remember that scene in The Two Live Crew Job where Parker and her counterpart are just hanging out in the ducts talking about birds? That has a real Noah feel to me.) He’s so good at getting in and out of places undetected that people call him The Ghost. Or, he claims that people do, but none of the others have ever actually heard anyone refer to him this way. He might just be hoping it catches on. (It isn’t catching on.) I think maybe he started breaking into places just for fun, as an adolescent kind of prank, but he maybe got mixed up in something dangerous or saw something he shouldn’t have, and so he’s lying low, and crime (to say nothing of being very good at breaking out of places) is a matter of survival, not fun.</p><p>The important thing to keep in mind is that this is Leverage we’re talking about, and also this is the Gangsey we’re talking about, so the time it takes for them to go from “grr I don’t trust any of you” to “you are my family and I would kill and/or die for any of you” is about three seconds.</p>
<hr/><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>asking ppl what Disney au theydd choose for their fav ship in the raven cycles</p>
</blockquote><p><b>Pynch</b>: Ronan has hated palace life ever since his father died and the Regent took over and made him start acting like a “real” prince. He escapes out into the city and falls in love with a street rat named Parrish, who is promptly arrested and executed….or so he thinks. He doesn’t know that the evil Regent sent Parrish out to steal a magical artifact from the cursed forest, or that Parrish survived by making a bargain with the forest and gaining some of its magic for himself, or that this Prince Adam he’s refusing to give the time of day is actually the boy he wishes he could have saved. Gosh it sure would simplify things if someone would <em>tell him</em> the <b>TRUTH</b>.</p><p><b>Blusey</b>: Gansey has been fascinated with humans his entire life. He has a whole grotto full of weird human artifacts! He’d like to see the human world up close just once, but his father forbids it. A demon offers him a chance to be human, but only if he can receive true love’s kiss by the end of the third day. Bad news: he immediately falls in love with a woman who’s cursed to kill her true love if she ever kisses him. (Good news: she’s a badass and they all live happily ever after because this is Disney.)</p><p><b>Sarchengsey</b>: Gansey wants to explore the world. Henry needs to get out of town in a hurry (some people are just so touchy about losing at dice). They decide to stowaway on a ship together, which is the first in a series of terrible decisions that ends with them (well, Henry) telling the people who are about to execute them that they are actually long-prophesied heroes of legend. It’s a lie that wouldn’t have fooled anyone for more than five minutes if Blue hadn’t agreed to help them fake their supposed supernatural powers in exchange for taking her with them when they leave. (Okay I <em>know</em> that Road to El Dorado is Dreamworks, or at least I know that <em>now</em>, I coulda SWORN it was Disney from that huge marketing push of “look, we reunited the musical team behind the Lion King,” but fuck it I’m not changing my mind. El Dorado. <em>Name</em> me a Disney movie that has that big of an OT3 energy. You can’t, can you.)</p><p><b>Platonic Blue &amp; Ronan</b>: Ronan is a terrible ruler and Blue is the peasant who is absolutely going to use the fact that he got turned into a llama to blackmail him into saving her village and yes I am saying I want to Emperor’s New Groove this shit. Honestly my second thought was Lilo &amp; Stitch so it only gets crackier from here, folks.</p><p><b>Platonic Ronan &amp; Declan</b>: When they were very young, Ronan’s magic almost killed Declan. Their parents were able to lock the magic away and erase all memory of it from Ronan’s mind, and they told Declan that it was his responsibility to make sure that it never reemerges. He spends his whole life doing just that, even when it means isolating their little family from the rest of the world, until the night they get into a huge fight and everything that was locked away comes pouring back out. Now Declan has to go back out into the world he shut himself off from in order to save his brother.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/183041624465/hilosing-my-mind-over-you-knowing-the-northern">original</a> <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/189159339490/thoughts-on-a-leverage-trc-au">tumblr</a> <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/190467388450/asking-ppl-what-disney-au-theydd-choose-for-their">posts</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Declan/Adam marriage of convenience</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for a couple anons</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>hmmm dadam getting married to not testify against each other, ronan thinking it's real despite them never acting like it is because he has no idea what's going on in declan's life ever and he's not going to ASK. also the idea of marrying someone who isn't your soulmate/for convenience is incomprehensible to him. cue alanis morissette's 'ironic': 'it's like meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his [husband who is my brother]</p>
</blockquote><p>Aaaah okay. Okay. This does things to me.</p><ul>
<li>what are these crimes Adam and Declan are committing together</li>
<li>are they engaged in ongoing organized crime because this is relevant to my interests</li>
<li>or was it a desperate one-time thing
<ul>
<li>did Declan kill someone</li>
<li>was it to protect Ronan</li>
<li>did Adam help him hide the body</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>how do they know each other enough that they trust each other in this way</li>
<li>this set up seems to suggest that Ronan only meets Adam <em>after</em> the marriage of convenience so this is raising more questions</li>
<li>did Declan once help Adam in some way/learn something about him that now they have dirt on <em>each other</em> and so his trust in Adam is based on a kind of mutually assured destruction?</li>
<li>does Ronan know about the crime(s)
<ul>
<li>no and that’s how Declan wants it; or</li>
<li>no and Declan tries to keep him informed of shit that affects the family but Ronan keeps blowing him off; or</li>
<li>yes because he went nosing around in Declan’s life and found more than he was expecting; or</li>
<li>yes because goddammit-Ronan-Declan-can’t-do-EVERYTHING-by-himself</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>what is the endgame ship here because honestly I love both of these possibilities</li>
<li>“I married you to keep us both out of jail but oops now I love you” is obviously wonderful</li>
<li>but “it never occurs to Ronan for even a second that these two people got married without being madly in love with each other, so he sees how Adam acts around/treats Declan and assumes that is what ‘Adam in love’ acts like, and so he does not recognize anything about the way that Adam acts around/treats him as being at all flirty or romantic” is also very wonderful</li>
<li>also “Declan halfway tells Ronan it’s a marriage of convenience on multiple occasions if Ronan could just be bothered to read between the lines even A TINY BIT or if he paid three seconds of attention to his brother’s life it would be super easy to put the pieces together” is very good</li>
<li>if this is “Declan has tried to inform Ronan of the crime(s) but Ronan refuses to listen to him” then it’s very VERY good because like it’s Ronan’s fault he was miserable this whole time, if he wasn’t such a dick to his brother this whole situation would’ve been so much easier for him
<ul>
<li>maybe he will learn a lesson from this!</li>
<li>he will not learn a lesson from this</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<hr/>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>ok but also dadam convenience marriage could also feature accidental lynch sibling bonding when ronan inevitably spends more time at declan's place to see adam but like,,, needs an excuse to be there</p>
</blockquote><p><b>Gansey:</b> not that I’m not glad to see you and your brother are getting along better, but how did it even happen?</p>
<p><b>Ronan: </b>well it started because I wanted to steal his husband.</p>
<p><b>Gansey: </b>…and then?</p>
<p><b>Ronan: </b>and then I stole his husband.</p>
<p><b>Gansey: </b>I’m sorry, you what – </p>
<p><b>Henry, making popcorn: </b>let the man speak.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>original <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/637328069365006336/hmmm-dadam-getting-married-to-not-testify-against">tumblr</a> <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/637512721004429313/ok-but-also-dadam-convenience-marriage-could-also">posts</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. game of thrones (actor) AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>written for an anon and ramenifyouplease</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Thinking About a ''game of thrones'' pynch. Or maybe as actors working on that Show? Who would you put in which house?</p>
</blockquote><p>The Lynches would have to be the Starks, or maybe the Greyjoys – one of those families that’s off in its own area and just does their own thing, to the point of being insular and cultish about it. Gansey would be closely related to but not actually royalty, so I suppose sort of the equivalent of the Baratheons minus Robert or the Lannisters minus Cersei.</p><p>I get stuck after that, though; the class difference between Gansey/Ronan and Adam/Blue is so crucial to the characterization but there just…isn’t…a whole hell of a lot of non-noble characters in Game of Thrones? The only one I can think of is Hot Blacksmith. Not that there’s anything <em>wrong </em>with a fic where Adam is a Hot Blacksmith who falls in love with the son of the remote snooty noble family, I just don’t know what the rest of the world looks like in that fic.</p><p>If they’re the cast of a Game of Thrones-esque show,  Gansey is definitely the actor who gives long earnest interviews about his character arc, complete with in depth knowledge of the show and the source material, and lots of discussion of the themes and the symbols and motifs and etc etc. Blue and Henry are the ones that get in trouble for goofing off during press junkets and saying hilarious weird shit that doesn’t answer any of the interviewers’ questions or help promote the show at all (except then they end up as gifs so maybe it does help the show find viewers). Ronan’s interviews are like pulling teeth, except if he has a chance to throw someone else under the bus by setting them up for awkward questions. Adam <em>does not appreciate this</em>; he’s bad enough at interviews already without anyone bringing up That One Time With The Sex Scene That Went Wrong.</p><hr/><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>not the got anon but im sorry to say u now have to extrapolate on That One Sex Scene That Went Wrong (TOSSTWW)</p>
</blockquote><p>Ronan’s character and Adam’s character have sex in the very first episode of the show. Adam barely knows Ronan, and he mostly thinks he’s an asshole, and now he’s supposed to pretend to be really into him and get naked and touch him in front of roughly a hundred people, and he gets so in his own head about it that Ronan goes to kiss him and Adam panics and moves wrong and ends up headbutting him, and they have to put off filming for half an hour while they check that Ronan’s nose isn’t broken.</p><p>Ronan takes all of a month to fall in love with Adam but he doesn’t make a move because there’s <em>no way on earth</em> that Adam could be at all attracted to him. He keeps bringing it up the way that people pick at scabs – he knows that he really should just try to forget about that scene, but 1. it’s the only time he ever got to kiss Adam, 2. maybe if he keeps remembering how bad it was it will help him get over Adam, 3. maybe if he keeps bringing it up Adam will go, actually I really want a do over.</p><p>Adam falls for Ronan but he can’t make a move because <em>oh no what if it’s like the pilot episode all over again.</em></p><p>Henry Cheng anonymously starts an internet campaign to get their characters back together because the pining is just ri-fucking-diculous and he’s highly worried that the only way they will ever kiss again is if they are contractually obligated to do so.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>original <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/185187775255/thinking-about-a-game-of-thrones-pynch-or">tumblr</a> <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/185190565965/not-the-got-anon-but-im-sorry-to-say-u-now-have-to">posts</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. ficlet - Gansey & Ronan, youtube AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "youtuber au, ronan and gansey??"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You haven’t posted a new video to the channel in three weeks.” Gansey hovers on the other side of the doorway, like if no part of him actually crosses over into Ronan’s bedroom it doesn’t count as violating his space. “The viewers are getting anxious. Some of them have decided that you’re dead. A smaller faction have decided that I asked you to leave the team and refrained from announcing the decision publicly so as to avoid backlash.”</p><p>“Cool, glad that everyone’s decided me dying is more likely than you firing me.”</p><p>“Try to produce some content soon, will you? It isn’t as though you spend any time on editing.” He sure doesn’t. Gansey says that his <em>filmmaking style</em> is <em>spontaneous</em> and <em>unfiltered</em>. Ronan says that he just shoots whatever he feels like and makes that everyone else’s problem. “And – you might find it improves your mood.”</p><p>Ronan throws a pillow at the door. Gansey steps back just before it slams shut in his face.</p><p>He doesn’t <em>produce any content</em>, Jesus Christ, but he does wander into the recording booth the next day. He hasn’t been keeping up on the channel, but he already knows this is day two of filming for episode eight of season four of Gansey’s weird history bullshit. Gansey does his videos the way Ronan used to go to church, same schedule every week, no excuses, no half-assing it, screw up once and you’re fucked for eternity.</p><p>Gansey hears the door open, but he doesn’t pause, just keeps talking about the Welsh. Ronan can see them both in the little recording preview that’s up on the screen, filming his approach. Gansey’s expression doesn’t even change. Leaving himself the option to use this footage, if he likes whatever happens.</p><p>Ronan drapes himself over the back of the chair, arms crossing loosely in front of Gansey’s chest, neck crushed against his shoulder, chin digging into his trapezius.</p><p>“I’m going through some shit,” he tells the camera. “Chill the fuck out and stop bugging Dick about it.”</p><p>Gansey takes the baton, no misstep even though he didn’t get a warning; he can’t do anything else, when he’s in<em> public figure</em> mode. “This has been a public service announcement from our Chief Pyrotechnics Officer, Ronan Lynch. Did you have anything else,” he adds, glancing over at Ronan, “or can I continue?”</p><p>“Nah, go on, talk about whales. I want to learn about orcas.”</p><p>Gansey sighs, a perfect expression of irritation and reluctant fondness that is destined to be edited out of the episode, only ever Ronan’s to hear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/642702120644132864/youtuber-au-ronan-and-gansey">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. ficlet - Adam/Ronan, aquarium</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>written for werewolffeelings: "pynch... aquarium 🐠"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Don’t know why anyone else is even <em>here</em>,” Ronan mutters after the fourth or fifth time he has to dodge to avoid running into someone. At least this one was a kid dashing over to the seahorse exhibit, careless in excitement, and not another texter. It’s hard to get angry about that. “It’s just a bunch of fish. They don’t even let you eat them.”</p>
<p>“This was your idea,” Adam starts.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know every loser in Boston was going to be here.”</p>
<p>“They aren’t. Don’t you think that every person in Boston is a loser?”</p>
<p>“Sure <em>feels</em> like this is every person in Boston.”</p>
<p>“If you can think ‘I want to go to an aquarium today,’” Adam steers them back on topic and into a side room that he hopes will be less busy, “then so could everyone else.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but I have a reason.”</p>
<p>“Which is?”</p>
<p>“It’s raining.”</p>
<p>“And you’re the only person who gets to stay indoors in the rain?”</p>
<p>Ronan <em>hrmph</em>s. “They could’ve all just stayed home.”</p>
<p>“So could we.”</p>
<p>“We had <em>plans</em>. You shouldn’t have to be trapped in your crappy dorm by something as stupid as the weather.” Ronan scowls at an eel in the nearest tank. The eel makes the same face back at him. “You should still get to do <em>something </em>special today.”</p>
<p>Adam suppresses a smile. “Right, the fish, that’s what makes today special, there’s nothing else about my boyfriend visiting me that I was looking forward to.”</p>
<p>Ronan shifts the scowl over in Adam’s direction. Hiding his smile becomes an unachievable goal, so Adam steps close enough Ronan can’t see him and kisses his cheek.</p>
<p>“Come on.” He takes Ronan’s hand and uses it to pull him out of the way of group looking at each other instead of where they’re going. “Let’s go outside and look at the seals.”</p>
<p>“It’s still raining.”</p>
<p>“If you’re that scared of water you shouldn’t have taken us to a building that’s full of it.”</p>
<p>Ronan flips him off, but he doesn’t let go of Adam’s hand, holds on until long after they’ve given up on the aquarium.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/642804961231732736/pynch-aquarium">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. ficlet - Ronan & Henry, got arrested AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "Ronan and Henry; got arrested au"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What’re you in for?“</p>
<p>"You were there,” says the other inmate – Ronan. That was his name. One of the cops had said it. “How stoned are you?”</p>
<p>“Less stoned by the minute,” Henry says. “But I had to ask, there’s no one else here to talk to. If I have to be in prison I want to have the full prison experience.”</p>
<p>“You’re not in prison.”</p>
<p>“Ah, my mistake, clearly these aren’t handcuffs.”</p>
<p>“This is a police precinct, dipshit. We haven’t even been processed yet.”</p>
<p>“Well <em>someone’s</em> been arrested before,” he goads. Ronan just shuts his eyes, tuning him out. Or trying to. Henry is not easily tuned out. “I don’t think she was impressed with you.”</p>
<p>He frowns. “Who.”</p>
<p>“The woman whose honor you tried to defend with your fists. She was more angry at your interference than wooed by your manliness.”</p>
<p>Ronan snorts. “Yeah, I’m really gonna lose sleep over that.”</p>
<p>Hm. Outlook not so good, concentrate and ask again. “The hot bartender, on the other hand…”</p>
<p>Ronan cracks an eye open.</p>
<p>“He looked <em>very</em> worried about your safety.”</p>
<p>That gets him both eyes. “Yeah?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>Ronan breathes out in a huff and thunks the back of his head against the wall. “He was probably just upset his stupid bar was getting wrecked.”</p>
<p>“You did make an impressive mess,” Henry compliments him. “I didn’t know you could actually break a table by throwing someone on it.”</p>
<p>“Get in the middle of a lot of bar fights, do you?”</p>
<p>“I go where the customer is.”</p>
<p>“What do people in a bar even need pot for? They have alcohol.”</p>
<p>“There’s no money in marijuana,” he informs Ronan. “Certainly not enough to be worth hanging out in a dive like <em>that</em>.”</p>
<p>“Fine. Pills, coke, meth, whatever you were selling.”</p>
<p>Henry drops his feet off the edge of his chair and onto the floor, outraged. “Do I look like someone who does <em>meth</em>?”</p>
<p>“All drugs are the same.”</p>
<p>“They definitely are not. Especially since I wasn’t selling drugs.”</p>
<p>“Then what were you selling?”</p>
<p>“What, you want me to confess in the middle of a jail cell?” Henry asks, ignoring Ronan’s complaint of <em>still not jail.</em> “No chance.”</p>
<p>Ronan squints, deciding something. Henry waits to see if he’ll be asked what he <em>allegedly</em> was selling and if he will own up to <em>allegedly</em> dealing in stolen art.</p>
<p>The moment breaks the other way. “Maybe if I yell they’ll put me in a different room.”</p>
<p>“If you must.” Henry sniffs. “But then I won’t put in a good word for you with the hot bartender.”</p>
<p>“Are you trying to blackmail me?” Ronan demands. “In the middle of a police station?”</p>
<p>“It’s not blackmail, it’s incentive!”</p>
<p>“Right, if I hang out with you until we’re released, you’ll go tell the bartender ‘he’s really fun to get arrested with’, that’s <em>incentive</em>?”</p>
<p>“What I tell him will depend on what kind of impression you make,” Henry says. “I’m not going to lie to him.”</p>
<p>He shakes his head and clams up.</p>
<p>Ten minutes go by. Or <em>at least</em> ten; Henry’s counting seconds in his head and he’s pretty sure the clock is slow.</p>
<p>Ronan says, “I’ve never been arrested before.”</p>
<p>He looks over. Ronan is staring dead ahead like Henry doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>“And your familiarity with police precincts?” he asks. “Does that stem from a deep love of crime fiction?”</p>
<p>“My brother’s in law school.”</p>
<p>“What do you know,” Henry says, as warm as Ronan was terse. “I also have a brother! We’re bonding already.”</p>
<p>Ronan sighs. “This is worse than prison.”</p>
<p>“How would you know? Trust me, as someone who <em>has</em> been arrested before – ”</p>
<p>“Wait, what?”</p>
<p>“ – there’s no comparison.”</p>
<p>“The fuck you’ve been arrested before. For what?”</p>
<p>“Ah-ah-ah, I just shared. It’s your turn to say something personal now.”</p>
<p>“I have a pet bird,” he says, “what were you arrested for?”</p>
<p>“Which time?”</p>
<p>He thinks about it. “The first time.”</p>
<p>“Public nudity.”</p>
<p>Ronan rolls his eyes up toward the ceiling. “Why’d I fucking ask.”</p>
<p>“Because you have nothing better to do? Because the hot bartender is really hot?”</p>
<p>“Shut up.”</p>
<p>“Because you like talking to me?”</p>
<p>“I don’t.”</p>
<p>“Because the real prison was the friends we made along the way?”</p>
<p>“Goddammit,” Ronan mutters, either to Henry for saying that, or to himself for smirking at it. “That one, yeah. Can I tunnel out now?”</p>
<p>“Nope,” Henry tells him, “I’m afraid you’re stuck in there.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/642813115508080640/ronan-and-henry-got-arrested-au">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. ficlet - Ronan & Henry, high fantasy AU</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for cowboyformitski: "If we may send you pairing + AU = three-sentence fic 😈 How about Ronan and Henry + high fantasy AU?"</p>
<p>I am aware it's not three sentences long.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You’re not a dragon.”</p>
<p>“And you’re a dork in stupid robes,” says the handsome yet otherwise <em>normal</em>, non-draconic, boring old human. “But I don’t break into your home and criticize you.”</p>
<p>“It’s a cave,” Henry points out. “No ‘breaking’ was required. I just walked in.”</p>
<p>“And now you can walk back out.”</p>
<p>“I will. Once I’ve seen the creature that lives here.”</p>
<p>“You have.” The man – man! human! two legs and <em>no</em> fangs in sight, ugh – wiggles his fingers, <em>so long</em>, and walks away, down into a deeper cavern.</p>
<p>Henry follows after him, pouting slightly. He thought maybe he’d have to prove himself, and he’d already been annoyed about that; his skill is beyond question. He hadn’t pictured needing to argue over someone <em>else’s</em> qualifications.</p>
<p>“The townspeople say a terrible monster haunts these lands.” His voice echoes a bit in here; the cavern is larger than he expected, and very nearly empty. If the man does live in this cave, he owns little more than a mattress with a few blankets. “One that flies around at night. I am noticing a distinct lack of wings on your part.”</p>
<p>“If you can’t fly without wings, that’s your problem, not mine.”</p>
<p>“They say that you have sharp cruel talons this long.” He holds his hands apart to demonstrate, exaggerating the description that had probably been exaggerated for him already. He has a <em>point</em> to prove.</p>
<p>“I had to file them down, I kept cutting myself shaving.”</p>
<p>“Uh-huh. And your tail, the one that can supposedly sweep clear through a building and knock it over? What did you do with that, take it off to keep it from getting dirty?”</p>
<p>“I’m not going to show you my tail,” he says, for all the world as though Henry has offended him. “We just met, what kind of dragon do you think I am?”</p>
<p>“No kind. Where’s the real monster?”</p>
<p>He shrugs. “Can’t help you. Looks like you came to the wrong cave.”</p>
<p>The possibility isn’t even worth consideration. “I never do anything wrong. If I divine a monster lives here, then a monster lives here. A <em>real</em> monster. One who slays knights and sacks castles and kidnaps princes.”</p>
<p>The man snorts. “If I’m not enough of a monster for you, you’ll definitely be disappointed by the prince.”</p>
<p>He blinks and then shakes his head a few times for good measure. It has been a long time since he was surprised by another person.</p>
<p>“Wait, are you saying Prince Ronan is still alive? And he’s here?”</p>
<p>Henry prides himself on – many things, and rightfully so, but among them his sense of observation. Half the mages with him at university had been so oblivious they wouldn’t notice that someone was walking around with no pants on, and the other half had been so oblivious they wouldn’t notice <em>they</em> had no pants. He’d always been perceptive, sharp eyes finding all the important details in a situation, even before he’d learned any magic to help him do it.</p>
<p>Right now he feels like a novice wandering into the library half-naked, because it’s only now getting his attention that they have reached the end of the cave system without finding any sign of any living creature except the man in front of him, and that the man bears a striking resemblance to the old king, the one who died in the coup, and that that resemblance is fading, <em>fast, </em>because the man no longer looks much like himself, or like anyone.</p>
<p>The no-longer-boringly-normal man lunges at him. He’s fast, but not fast enough. Five feet from Henry he collides into an invisible wall with enough force that he reels back and stumbles all the way to the cave wall, barking out a sound of pain that no human throat has ever produced.</p>
<p>“What was that for?” he yells, clutching at a face that has rather a lot more teeth than it used to.</p>
<p>“You attacked me!” Henry says. “What was <em>that</em> for?”</p>
<p>“To get you to <em>leave</em>.” His growl bounces strangely off the walls, like the rock is buzzing as he speaks. Or maybe that’s just what caves sound like. Henry will happily admit to not having a wealth of experience hanging around in caves. “There’s no prince here that you can save. There’s a monster you can try to kill, but it’s going to be a lot harder than you think.”</p>
<p>“Then it’s fortunate that I am not in the business of saving princes <em>or</em> killing monsters,” although he might have to consider giving that first one a try. He is in the business of curse breaking, if the curse is interesting enough. This one looks fascinating. “Do I look like an idiot knight who runs around sticking his sword in everything?”</p>
<p>“You look like you left the house in your pajamas.”</p>
<p>“You’re not one to talk about appearances right now,” Henry informs him. The prince’s transformation has slowed to a stop, but he’s still rather more gray and scaly than when they’d met. “Go all the way monster or change back.”</p>
<p>“Why, so you can blast me with your magic again?”</p>
<p>“Because this in-between state is hideous. If you want me to put a spell on you that badly I can indulge you later. Right now I’d like to talk business, and I’d like to <em>not</em> be repulsed while I do so.”</p>
<p>He’s seen the expression <em>wait, WHAT is this crazy mage up to</em> enough times that he can recognize it at a glance, even if the face it’s on is painfully distorted. “You went looking for a monster to do <em>business</em> with.”</p>
<p>“Of course. Who better to work magic with than a creature who is magic?”</p>
<p>“Someone who actually wants to work with you?” He’s shifting back to human, slowly, like he’s too confused by Henry to notice the monster slipping away.</p>
<p>“Oh by all means, if you aren’t bored yet of scaring peasants and eviscerating livestock, I’ll be on my way.”</p>
<p>He still looks confused, but abruptly he shrugs. Henry is much less familiar with the expression on his face now. He decides that it means <em>what the hell, I’ll play along</em>.</p>
<p>“Depends,” Ronan says, but it’s obviously a <em>yes</em>. Henry is as right as he ever is. “What’d you have in mind?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/643708088650743808/if-we-may-send-you-pairing-au-three-sentence">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. ficlet - Gangsey, old time photo studio</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for an anon: "The Gangsey + old time photo studio"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I’m not going to smile.”</p>
<p>“So this is exactly like every other second of your life,” Blue says. “Cool announcement, we all really needed that breaking news.”</p>
<p>“You ever see an old photograph?” Ronan continues. “No one looks happy in those.”</p>
<p>“And clearly we’re striving for historical accuracy,” Adam says, while Henry picks up a cowboy hat in one hand and a flapper’s headband in the other, weighing his options.</p>
<p>“No one is forcing you to be here, Lynch,” Henry says, which is technically true in that Gansey’s badgering stopped short of physical action. He settles on the cowboy hat and puts the headband on Noah, where it clashes with the sheriff’s vest he has on. Gansey looks vaguely pained by the anachronism. Ronan would probably say that’s what he deserves. “You can run along anytime.”</p>
<p>“If I leave someone could see me.”</p>
<p>“You know they’re taking a picture, right? There’s going to be evidence of this?” Adam asks. “If you stay someone will definitely see you.”</p>
<p>“Oh leave him,” Blue says. “He can just watch, if he’s too <em>scared</em> to be in a photograph.”</p>
<p>Ronan stares her down, to no effect. “Are you trying to fucking dare me into a stupid costume?”</p>
<p>“No, <em>obviously</em>, because you’re <em>way </em>too smart for that.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Noah chimes in. “Ronan would <em>never </em>fall for something so obvious.”</p>
<p>“You’re doing it wrong,” he snaps. “That’s not even reverse psychology, that’s just you saying nice shit about me sarcastically.”</p>
<p>“We could say mean things about you,” Henry offers, “if that would make you happier.”</p>
<p>Gansey puts his foot down. “That’s enough. If Ronan doesn’t want to be in the photo, he doesn’t have to be,” contradicting not only his friends but also himself as of five minutes ago.</p>
<p>“I said I’d do it,” Ronan complains, bewildered, “I just said I wouldn’t smile, Jesus Christ.” He grabs the closest costume on the rack without even checking what it is.</p>
<p>Blue and Noah and Henry all look pleased with themselves as they pose in front of the camera. Gansey looks happy that they’re allowed to move forward. Ronan, as promised, is scowling, which might make for a funny picture, but they have a lot of those. They don’t have a lot of fun, happy pictures.</p>
<p>Adam stands too close to him, brushing arm to arm. When Ronan looks at him in surprise he just looks calmly back. Gansey sling an arm around Ronan on his other side, and Blue, who’d hopped up on the fake bar behind them, leans forward and rests her chin on his shoulder. By the time Henry and Noah yell CHEESE, Ronan has broken his promise to them all with a grin.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/644327939729735680/the-gangsey-old-time-photo-studio">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. ficlet - Adam/Ronan, beach</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for hklnvgl: "pynch at the beach? 💛"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You’re going to get a sunburn.”</p>
<p>“You’re going to get an ulcer.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, probably,” Adam agrees. “How is my ulcer supposed to negate your sunburn?”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to put on sunscreen,” Ronan says, half-expecting Adam to argue <em>you can’t change reality just by wanting it bad enough</em>. “I want to drag your ass into the ocean.” He tugs on Adam’s arm again.</p>
<p>Adam digs his heels into the sand and doesn’t budge. Fuck, why does he have to be so stubborn; fuck, Ronan loves that he’s so stubborn.</p>
<p>“Lynch, we drove <em>two hours</em> to get here,” he says. “We’re damn well not leaving until we’ve done everything we want to do. You have time to prevent skin cancer and shove me under a wave.”</p>
<p>Ronan squints through the impossible brightness of the day, staring hard to see Adam – his Adam, Adam Parrish, telling him that they don’t have to pick and choose which desires to chase, that they don’t have to ration joy, that today they can have <em>everything we want</em>.</p>
<p>He thumps down on his ass next to their beach towel, “fine, get it over with,” and lets Adam take care of him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/644322576373530624/pynch-at-the-beach">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. ficlet - Blue & Adam, garden store</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written for ephemeraltea: "Blue and Adam working in a garden store together?"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Whose turn is it to deal with asshole regulars,” Adam asks, “yours or mine?”</p>
<p>“Ugh, I think it’s mine,” Blue admits with no enthusiasm. “Which one is it this time?”</p>
<p>“The guy with the class ring who’s convinced he knows more about orchids than I do.”</p>
<p>“You have killed lot of orchids.” She says it in what’s clearly supposed to sound like a <em>breaking bad news gently</em> kind of way. It doesn’t even come close. But then, no one’s good at something on the first try.</p>
<p>“He doesn’t know that,” Adam says. “Also, that was a long time ago. Also, who had to rescue your fig tree?”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t count, you didn’t do anything different than I did. It just decided to stop dying when you took it so that I would look bad.”</p>
<p>“Do you think that maybe says something about you? That you assume everyone up to and including plants makes all their decisions based on spite?”</p>
<p>Blue picks up the heaviest planter they sell, for no other reason than to be holding it. He’s seen this trick before; she claims it gives her an excuse to hurry customer conversations along, <em>hey make this short and to the point, I’m in the middle of something</em>. He’s pretty sure she does it to metaphorically and physically flex her muscles in front of the customers: <em>I’m tougher than you are</em>.</p>
<p>“I’m going to go deal with that asshole.” She puts on her terrifying customer service smile. “And then you’re next.”</p>
<p>“Don’t rush back on my account,” he tells her, faux courtesy, but once she’s gone he picks up her broom and finishes the sweeping up.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/644788137106800640/blue-and-adam-working-in-a-garden-store-together">original tumblr post</a>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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